You’ve seen it before, on Star Trek or an episode of the Twilight Zone, in movies and books and slush pile stories: in this story, the white people are oppressed! Or it’s a matriarchy or in this society it’s normal Read more
When I was young, in my twenties, I walked past a man who had just been shot. It was on Euclid Avenue, an ugly stretch with a brown strip mall of empty store fronts on one side and a gravel Read more
In college, I took the advanced poetry class (after the beginning and the intermediary) and on the first day the professor asked, “Who here is a poet?” Two or three hands went up. I didn’t raise mine. In booming outrage, Read more
So there I was, in my natural habitat, the dancefloor. I was in my early twenties, getting my groove on, flirting with the boys, attracting a lot of them, keeping them in line, not paying for drinks. Not to brag. Read more
Class affects so much of life, and it’s galling how it affects how pleasant your work environment can be. I work at a university, so there are minute sub-stratas of classes in the staff. Your class is partially indicated by Read more
I hear a lot about how it’s important to have an ego in writing. You have to believe you have something worth saying. You need that self-belief to battle the tide of rejection. It’s advice that always made me uncomfortable. Read more
How did I go from a person who submits a lot of stories for publication to someone who gets acceptance letters? Did I just… get better? If so, how? And how can I pin the process down in a clear Read more